Shootout: Who makes better weapons

Oct 10 2011

Rakesh Krishnan Simha

Russia vs US in military technologies. Rakesh Krishnan Simha explores advantages and shortcomings of American and Russian weapons tested in a number of war conflicts.

The time: 2 pm, December 22, 1971. The place: Jamnagar, a city on the west coast of India. One of the most eagerly awaited dogfights in aviation history is about to take place. The Americans have supplied their ally Pakistan with the most advanced fighter aircraft in their inventory, the F-104 Starfighter, while the Indians have opted for the Russian MiG-21. It will be the first aerial combat between mach 2 (twice thespeed of sound) aircraft.

Two F-104’s of the Pakistan Air Force enter
Indian air space for an attack on a forward airbase in the western Indian city
of Jamnagar. As the first Pakistani aircraft dives in towards the airfield, a
patrolling MiG-21 pilot spots the attacking aircraft and gets after him.

Observing the MiG on his tail, the
Pakistani F-104 breaks off the attack, turns and tries to shake off its
pursuer. However, the Indian pilot pulls the MiG-21 into a tighter turn well
inside the enemy plane and launches an air-to-air missile. It misses.

In the meantime, the pilot of the second
Pakistani Starfighter, the wingman, sees another MiG-21 turning towards him.
Realising he’s up against a much superior aircraft, he makes his escape.

His captain, however, is not so lucky. He
attempts to get away using sheer speed but realises the MiG-21 is equally fast.
The chase now takes them over the shark-infested waters of the Arabian Sea.
Instead of using his missiles, the Indian pilot takes aim with his cannon and
fires a long burst. Wise decision – flashes on the F-104’s metallic surface
indicate a direct hit. Seconds later the American-built aircraft spins out of
control and crashes into the sea.

The Indians send out rescue boats but the
pilot is not found. At that speed when you hit the water’s surface it’s like
hitting concrete.

The result of that dogfight led aviation
experts to pass the verdict: the best Russian interceptor was better than the
best American attack aircraft.

You won’t find mention of such encounters
in the Western media for obvious reasons. Fed on a steady diet of Pentagon
press releases and sometimes working as embedded reporters in war zones, most
Western journalists are not able to make informed judgments. They suffer in
another way – you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Employment in corporate
America means you can’t afford to write anything that will portray American
defence equipment as anything less than exemplary. End result: objectivity is
tossed out the window.

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Designed
to work

Russian weapons are meant to work – they
are workhorses. In 1958, before Western corporate interests and journalism
became bedfellows, here’s what TIME magazine wrote: “Russian weapons are
generally simpler in design and more mobile. For too long the West believed
that the Soviets made simple weapons because they were too unsophisticated to
make complex ones. Now the West realizes that the simplicity bespeaks a high
state of engineering skill.”

A classic case is that of the MiG-25 Foxbat
mach 3 interceptor. Designed to combat the American Valkyrie bomber that never materialised,
it became a major scare word among NATO pilots throughout the 1970s. The chief
reason was the Foxbat could fly faster and climb higher – often to the edge of
space – than any Western aircraft. It was a mystery in the West until 1976 when
a defector flew a MiG-25 to Japan.

When the US National Air & Space
Intelligence Center dismantled the aircraft they found the on-board avionics
were based on vacuum-tube technology rather than solid-state electronics. There
was derisive laughter in the Pentagon when they came to know the Russians were
using outdated technology in their most advanced aircraft.

But the Americans continued to deliberate
why the Russians were using vacuum tubes. It took them many years to find out
that the person who had designed the Foxbat was as clever as a fox. With the
vacuum tubes the MiG-25’s radar had enormous power to burn through – that is,
it was invulnerable to – any electronic jamming. And, the Pentagon generals
were devastated to know, the vacuum tubes made the aircraft’s systems resistant
to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP, about which the Russians knew long before the
West did), meaning that in the event of a nuclear war the Foxbat would be the
only – yes the only – aircraft flying on the planet.

Today, 45 years after its first flight, the
Foxbat remains the world’s fastest fighter – able to outrun every Western
fighter that has been in service. Ever.

Patriot: Overhyped and underwhelming

Nobody is arguing that Western weapons
platforms are inferior. On the contrary, the legendary U-2 and SR-71 spy planes
and the B-52 bomber are a testament to the engineering skills of designers at
American defence companies.

But take the Patriot missile that was known
as the Scud-buster during the 1991 Gulf War for its ‘record’ against Iraqi Scud
missiles. If you watched CNN those days you will recall American reporters,
executives at Raytheon which made the Patriot, and US Army generals jumping up
and down on TV describing a near 100 percent kill rate. According to them, US
and Israeli Patriot batteries were downing the Scuds like boys shooting ducks
in a video game.

Here’s what really happened. On April 7,
1992 Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Reuven
Pedatzur of Tel Aviv University
testified before a US House Committee that according to their independent
analysis of video tapes, the Patriot system very likely had a zero success
rate. Let’s hear that again: a zero success rate.

Pedatzur is no armchair analyst. He is a
retired fighter-pilot of the Israel Air Force, with 22 years flying experience.
He quotes none other than Major General Avihu Ben-Nun, the direct commander of
the Patriot batteries during the war.

Ben-Nun testifies that on the night of
January 25, 1991, seven Iraqi missiles were fired at Israel – six at Tel Aviv
and one at Haifa. No fewer than 27 Patriots were launched that night; not a
single Iraqi missile was hit. Worse, the Patriots hit the ground and caused
collateral damage.

US President George H. Bush, a former CIA
spy, speaking to workers at Raytheon’s plant, utilised some of his propaganda
skills. He claimed the Patriots had a 97 percent success rate. Ben Nun’s
testimony proves Bush was lying. “The reports about the Patriot's success
during the war – while the originators of those reports knew them to be
incorrect – should be viewed within the realm of psychological warfare,” says
Ben Nun.

So much for the Patriot’s prowess!

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The
perils of pork

The above analysis illustrates a key
difference between Western and Russian weapons platforms. Western, in
particular American, weapons are treated as corporate crown jewels. Since they
bring in profits to the companies, who often have politicians in their pocket,
they are too big to fail even if they are ineffectual in war or outdated. This
is known as pork.

The ultimate case of pork is the F-16
Falcon fighter-bomber. This 1970s origin aircraft is built from parts
manufactured in no less than 46 American states. It is truly the case of a
plane that won’t be allowed to die because too many political careers rest on
its aging airframe. Earlier this year, the Americans tried to peddle it in New
Delhi but mercifully for the Indian Air Force (IAF) it was shot down. Days
later, the US ambassador to India resigned, revealing the close nexus between
America’s political class and its arms industry.

America’s newest toy is the F-22 Raptor,
the ‘fifth generation’ stealth fighter. It was designed during the last years
of the Cold War to keep up with advances in Soviet fighter technology, but
while the Soviet Union walked into the sunset, the plane was cleared for
take-off anyway. Each of these planes costs $361 million and around 700 were
planned although production was limited to 185. It is perhaps the only American
aircraft in history that the politicians want to be built whereas the generals,
normally known to have an insatiable appetite for weapons, have said please no
more. It’s easy to see why – the Raptor was developed for the defence of the
continental United States, and currently the only country that has bombers that
can reach the US is Russia, which is by no yardstick an enemy country. Despite
its horrendously expensive price tag, the US Air Force (USAF) doesn’t have the
nerve to test the F-22 in
combat.

The
Israeli-Syrian air war -1983

Much has been written about the Israeli Air
Force’s near wipe-out of the Russian-armed Syrian Air Force in the 1983 air
battle over Lebanon.
What really happened? The most important factor in any war is morale, which
springs from training. It is universally known the Israeli Defence Forces are
highly motivated because the country’s very survival depends on hanging on in a
very dangerous region, surrounded by countries that openly call for its
destruction.

In contrast, the Syrian pilots would hardly
be called air aces – not by a long shot. During the war, the Israelis used a
whole lot of innovative combat strategies; for instance they looped across the
Mediterranean Sea and came up from behind the Syrians, thereby surprising their
ground radar and pilots. Worse, the poorly trained Syrian pilots panicked as
warning beeps went off inside their cockpits, indicating that Israeli fighter
aircraft had got a radar lock on them. Many Syrian pilots hastily ejected
instead of putting up a fight. Those that held their nerve, performed admirably
against huge odds – the Israeli war machine is a behemoth.

Yom
Kippur War - 1973

In this bitterly fought Middle East war the
most decisive new weapon was the Russian SA-6 surface-to-air missile. The
Israelis encountered it on the Sinai front while their US built F-4 Phantom and
Skyhawk jets were attempting to knock out the pontoon bridges placed across the
Suez Canal by the Egyptians. In the first two days of fighting, 40 Israeli
planes were shot down near the canal, most of them by SA-6 batteries. The
missile was equally devastating over the Golan Heights, protecting the Syrians
and exacting a heavy toll of F-4 Phantom and Skyhawks. The missile batteries
were manned by a Russian crew.

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Gulf
War -1991

Similarly, in the first Gulf War, Iraqi
T-72 crews performed pretty dismally. In his book Inside the Great Tanks,
military writer Hans Halberstadt quotes Marc Sehring of the Patton Tank Museum, Fort
Knox, Kentucky, “If
the crews were equally well-trained (and that's really the key ingredient) the
T-72 would probably have been the winner.” Remember, the T-72 was developed in
the 1970s while its main American rival in the Gulf War, the M1, was a whole
new generation ahead of it.

Indians show the world how to fight

In striking contrast, in the hands of a
motivated fighting force, Russian weapons do precisely what they are meant to –
win wars. In a daring move during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War, the Indian Navy’s
Russian-built missile boats dodged the American built Pakistani Navy ships and
attacked Karachi harbour, setting fire to the tanker farms – the city burned
for a week. In the same war, a Russian built Indian destroyer, INS Rajput,
depth charged a hunter killer submarine of the Pakistan Navy, the Ghazi, off
the eastern Indian port of Visakhapatnam. The American built sub went down with
its crew and was later lifted from the sea by the Indian Navy. However, later
to avoid embarrassing the Americans, the sub was allowed to sink.

Gwalior
air combat

Among the most blogged and debated
incidents in military aviation are the Cope India air combat exercises between
the IAF and the USAF.

In Cope India 2004 that took place near the
central Indian airbase of Gwalior, US Air Force F-15s were eliminated in
multiple exercises against the IAF’s licence-built MiG-21s and MiG-27s. Observe
that the Indian MiGs are a generation older than the American ones.

When word of the results reached
Washington, it caused considerable uproar – and heartburn. American Congressmen
and military observers – who continue to see India through Cold War lenses –
quickly attempted to dismiss the results claiming that the USAF did not bring
its true ‘go-to-war-gear’ to these exercises.

However, in an interview to Aviation Week,
Maj. Mark A. Snowden, the USAF 3rd Wing's chief of air-to-air tactics and a
participant in Cope India 2004, said the USAF underestimated the Indians. “The
outcome of the exercise boils down to the fact that they ran tactics that were
more advanced than we expected,” he said.

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When questioned on the capabilities of IAF
pilots, Col Greg Newbech, the USAF Team Leader, said: “What we’ve seen in the
last two weeks is the IAF can stand toe-to-toe with best air force in the
world. I pity the pilot who has to face the IAF and chances the day to
underestimate him; because he won’t be going home.”

Those who continued to claim it was a
one-off freakshow got a bigger jolt the following year at the Cope India 2005.
Held at the Kalaikundi air base in eastern India, this time the Indians finally
brought their latest Russian acquisition, the Sukhoi-30 MKIs. To avoid rivalry
between the two air forces, this time the exercises had mixed teams of Indian
and American pilots. Yet in a large number of encounters, particularly between
the American F-16s and the Sukhoi-30 MKIs, the Indian pilots came out winner.

Jasjit Singh of the New Delhi-based Centre
for Air Power Studies said in an interview to the Christian Science Monitor:
“Since the Cold War, there has been the general assumption that India is a
third-world country with Soviet technology, and wherever Soviet-supported
equipment went, it didn’t perform well. That myth has been blown by the
results.”

Stealth
technology

Pentagon generals and Western armchair
strategists are known to boast about the range of stealth aircraft in the
American armoury, against which the Russians have no match apparently. Well,
first off, stealth technology is not an American invention. The entire idea,
concept and theory of stealth aircraft was fully developed in Russia years
before the Americans came to know about it.

The reason why Moscow did not go ahead with
development of a stealth bomber was simply because it wasn’t needed. Russian
plans to attack the continental United States involved strategic Tupolev-160
Blackjack bombers coming in over the North Pole and firing nuclear-tipped
cruise missiles at American cities from international airspace.

On the other hand, Russia’s cities are deep
inside the territory of its vast Eurasian landmass. But more crucially the
Soviet Union, which was obsessed with security because of the Nazi invasion,
had deployed no less than 30,000 surface-to-air missiles to defend against
invading aircraft and cruise missiles. Nothing less than a stealth aircraft
could penetrate these defences.

Or could it? During the 78-day NATO bombing
of tiny Serbia, the Serbian air defence unit armed with a 1960s vintage Pechora
SA-3 surface to air missile shot down a stealth F-117 Nighthawk fighter.
Incredibly, as all hell broke loose around them, amidst all the radio chatter,
the Serbs were able to pick the pilot who had days earlier bombed a children’s
hospital.

Korean War: Chinese experience

Hardly anyone remembers that the Chinese
armed with Russian tanks and aircraft soundly thrashed General Douglas
MacArthur’s Western forces, resulting in a hasty call for ceasefire by the US. At any rate, without a Chinese push the northern half of Korea would have
been in American hands.

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Korean
War: MiG-15 vs F-86 and B-29

A community of former F-86 pilots and
airmen from the Korean War aided by armchair analysts initially claimed a
10-to-1 kill ratio against the MiG-15, a myth that lasted over 30 years. As new
data were released, that came down to 7-to-1, and now it’s 2-to-1.

The MiG-15 was a much superior fighter than
the F-86 in
terms of speed and altitude. The only factor that can explain the ratio is
pilot proficiency. Chinese and Korean pilots don’t have a history of dogfight
proficiency. But the ratio changed when Russian WWII veterans joined
combat. Flying the MiG-15 over Korea,
the Russian pilots accounted for a better than 1:1 kill ratio against American
WWII veterans flying their F-86 Sabres.

In fact, the MiG-15 relegated the American
B-29 Superfortress bomber obsolete. Even when accompanied by F-86 fighter
escorts, MiGs inflicted such appalling losses on Superfortress formations that
daylight B-29 strategic bombing over Korea had to be halted – the MiG ended
American air supremacy.

Blackbird grounding mystery

No comparison of Russian and Western
weapons would be complete without looking into the sudden retirement of the
stealth SR-71 spy plane. Nicknamed Blackbird for its distinctive black
silhouette, it could fly higher and faster than any aircraft in the world. For
nearly two decades, it flew unopposed clicking images over Vietnam, Cuba, Libya
and any country the US targeted as an enemy before the CIA suddenly retired it.

While no reason was ever put out by the
spooks at the agency, defence experts cite the development of the MiG-31
Foxhound as a key factor. When you retire a plane that is able to outrun
everything, it perhaps has something to do with the fact that on June 3, 1986
over the Barents Sea six MiG-31s performed a co-ordinated intercept against an
SR-71. The aerial pincer simulated an all-angle AAM attack that the Blackbird’s
high speed, high altitude and ECM capability could not have defeated. The
rattled American pilots took off; the SR-71 was never seen near Russian borders
after that incident.

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Pentagon
propaganda

American attrition – whether of men or
machines – in war is almost always accidental. The US wouldn’t deign to admit
that a third-world nation is able to take out a US aircraft or tank. Hundreds
of American soldiers have perished in Afghanistan and Iraq after the Taliban or
resistance fighters downed helicopters but the Pentagon describes virtually
every single incident as a crash.

What about that USAF F-15E Strike Eagle
that went down in Libya on March 19, 2011? Predictably, the Americans said it
was a crash. However, information is filtering out through unofficial sources
that it was very likely downed by ground fire from a heavily armed Libyan air
defence regiment. Now the Americans say the cause was “lead ingestion”. That
surely wins the euphemism of the year award.

Both the Syrians and Iraqis have downed
F-15s using Russian aircraft, and many independent military observers,
including several American, assert that is true, but the Pentagon continues to
deny their No.1 dogfight duke (the F-22 is kept away from combat because of a
whole lot of problems) is vulnerable.

Endgame

Bill Sweetman and Bill Gunston are counted
among the world’s leading weapons experts. More than 25 years ago, they
demolished the stereotype about Soviet weapons being technologically backward
in comparison with Western ones. According to them, while the Soviet civilian
economy was a command one producing average quality consumer goods, the
military bureaus had to face real competition from each other, leading to cutting
edge weapons that were far ahead of anything the West could come up with.
Sweetman and Gunston write, “In the entire history of the human race, there has
never been a fighting machine as formidable and terrifying as the air and
rocket forces of the Soviet Union.”

The bottomline: in a combat situation if
the military is well trained and motivated, Russian weapons will most likely
carry the day. And you can take that to the bank.

Finally, and this would be amusing if it
were not so tragic, the designers of the F-104 Starfighter used a
downward-firing ejection seat, presenting a frightening conundrum for pilots in
low-altitude escapes. Some 21 fighter pilots failed to escape their stricken
aircraft in low-level emergencies because of it.